antibiotics... I didn’t see antibiotics there anywhere in the article.
How MANY of these patients were prescribed an antibiotic at age 3 months for a HEAD cold and a “red ear drum” (best treated with steroids if not tincture of time) and went on to have “recurrent AOM, sinusitis, bronchitis, colitis, et ceteritis” throughout their formative years all because of the sloppy unforgivable belief that antibiotics are benign yet are prescribed in roughly fifty percent of urgent care visits across the nation?
And those “metabolites”? Also known as cofactors, they’re products of OTHER bacteria necessary to maintain colonies of beneficial bacteria.
This is basic science and in the interest of “customer service,” and worship of the almighty dollar, “providers” frequently accede to pig-ignorant patients with no initials after their last names in their demands for antibiotics for a scratchy throat of one hour they “always get antibiotics for” because “I always get sinus infections.”
Amateurs. Idiots. Collaborators.
ASSASSINS! (in my best Doctor “Bones” McCoy impersonation).
Hint: Antibiotics are merely part of the problem.